Ostracized
by Lady Azar de Tameran
Summary: One Shot. I only do the things that need to be done. I say all the things that they are thinking but will never admit.


_**Ostracized**_

**Disclaimer**: I do not own _Stargate Atlantis_. If I did, Carson and Zelenka would have much bigger parts.

This is the third entry into my Alternative Perspectives series, but it is not necessary to read the other parts for this to make sense. Also, this is un-beta'ed, so all the mistakes are my own.

Kavanaugh's POV

* * *

Traitor. Betrayer. Selfish bastard. Arrogant ass.

That's all I am to them. I have been here since the beginning, since the very first part of the expedition. I helped them free the jumper from the Gate. I helped fix Atlantis when she was broken. Hell, I helped protect the city from the Wraith.

Yet, when there is a traitor in our midst, they automatically think it's me.

As if I couldn't destroy the city in a much more elegant way than a bomb.

Still, it's me they think of first. Me that they distrust.

Not the scores of unknown refugees that now live on the mainland. The same ones that Sheppard and his lackeys always seem to bring back with them.

Not the dozens of new military gorillas that the SGC insists on sending. The same ones that are constantly coming and going, never staying long enough to make much of a difference. The ones that we know little or nothing about.

Not the new scientists, who McKay insists are even stupider than the original bunch. The same ones that like to play with the Ancient technology and blow up the labs on a regular basis.

But it's me that they think of, me that is threatened and mistreated.

All because they don't like me. All because they don't like the things I tell them.

They don't even realize that I am merely the devil's advocate. I only bring to their attention all the things they neglect to notice, refuse to see. I show them the things that their narrow worldviews never cover.

Elizabeth Weir is a tough politician, and she can make the hard decisions. She has kept us together when others would have let us fall apart. Yet, for all her experience, she is incredibly naïve. At the end of the day, she still believes that the good guys always win. She doesn't realize that the line between good and evil is thin, if it even exists at all.

John Sheppard is actually a very good military commander. His men respect him. Hell, even I respect him. But he is too focused on playing the role of moronic but likable pilot to use his real gifts, including the ones I'm not supposed to know about. If he bothered to help us with our calculations, to even look them over for us, errors like McKay made with Arcturus never would have happened.

Carson Beckett is just as gifted, and he is exactly the kind of person we need as our Chief Physician. He is level-headed and is sole voice of reason in the face of insanity. But at the end of the day, he is still a coward at heart. In things not related to medicine or health, and even then sometimes, he lets himself be pushed around. He constantly allows Weir, McKay, and Sheppard to run all over him, to treat him like a doormat. The threat of torture is one thing, but I highly doubt that his colleagues would harm him if he asserted himself more.

Rodney McKay is a brilliant man, capable of making jumps of logic that leave the rest of us baffled. He has brought us through countless situations mostly intact, and the fact that he was scared out of his wits every time only makes my grudging respect for him grow. But he is incapable of seeing what is right in front of his nose. He refuses to admit that he can be wrong, that the things he sometimes says and does to his subordinates hurt them far worse in the long run than they ever help. He doesn't realize that his underlings are more terrified of making him mad than they are worried about finding the correct solutions.

That doesn't even cover the fact that McKay was once known as the scourge of the SGC, the terror of Area 51. Even now, Colonel Carter quietly shudders whenever McKay's name is even mentioned. Out of all of them, he should understand. He should see that the same role has fallen to me in Atlantis, but he doesn't. He wears the same rose-colored lens as everyone else.

But no matter how much they hated him then and still very much do now, they never accused him of betraying them.

I only do the things that need to be done. I say all the things that they are thinking but will never admit, all the things that need to be said, need to be considered.

And it might make me unpopular. It might make me a son of a bitch, but it has helped us more times than I can count, even if nobody is willing to acknowledge it. Somebody needs to do it; somebody has to be the bastard.

I only wish that it wasn't me.

* * *

Ever Hopeful,

_Azar_


End file.
